Offseason news and updates

Tsipis leaves GW to go to Wisconsin after winning the A-10 the last two years.  Wisconsin has five straight losing seasons.  He will be replaced by Jennifer Rizzotti, who is an excellent hire (helped turn around Hartford and as a player was part of one of UConn's undefeated national champion teams).  I'm not too worried about this coaching change.  I saw a lot of Tsipis's coaching as a function of having an elite player in Jonquel Jones, and was curious to see how he would react without a player of that caliber for a season.  Now, it will be an excellent coach in Rizzotti's calling.

Lexi Martin of Lehigh (a 15 and 14 player for Lehigh) will be immediately eligible for GW.

Crowley leaves St Bona to go to Providence after making the R32 this year in the NCAA tourney.  That one I don't get, as it's not even an upgrade in my book, though Crowley did in an exit interview say that he's always wanted to coach in the Big East.  Providence has only one winning season since 2000, and has been a BE afterthought.  It also is bothersome for the appearance of the A-10 vs the BE, where the A10 and BE have been relatively close after the BE split (both have the same number of NCAA bids since the split, the A10 has more NCAA wins, and they've split the final RPI rankings).  Yet, a coach from one of the better A10 program leaves to go to to one at the bottom of the BE.  Ouch!

St Bonaventure will replace Crowley with Jesse Fleming.  Jesse was a previous assistant under Crowley who recently was an assistant at Bowling Green.  SBU's 2012 Sweet 16 team had Fleming as the lead recruiter for it, and according to sources he was the recruiter for Dana Mitchell.  Along with the coaching change St Bonaventure lost a quality player in Miranda Drummond.  Arguably the A10's most improved player, Drummond was a possible A10 preseason thrid-teamer for the upcoming season.

UMass released Dawley after a disappointing tenure where she finished 46-133.  Dawley will be replaced by Tory Verdi, who was a the coach at Eastern Michigan the last four years.  Verdi was a tremendous recruiter for EMU (though his teams didn't seem to play to their talent level despite making the WNIT twice) and also was the lead assistant for Kansas for two years prior.  He seems like a good get for a struggling UMass program.

With the coaching change, Cierra Dillard (one of UMass's only bright spots last year) will transfer to Buffalo.  It will be a hard road early on in Verdi's tenure without Dillard.  Buffalo is set up to be very good two years from now with the transfer.

Amber Deane leaves Dayton as a graduate student to join the IU Hoosiers.  It's a huge blow to Dayton.

Mooriah Rowser will be a graduate transfer addition to VCU from Memphis.  She averaged 11.1 ppg at Memphis.

Breanna Cavanaugh, a previous top 100 recruit who already transferred from Cal to Rutgers after suffering a bad concussion, will transfer to Fordham.  She will have to sit out a year.

Carey and Potvin are both leaving Pitt.  Carey to Rutgers.